dumpster pools

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: silliness | active: 2009 | link: website

update, Aug 2011: Macro|Sea, the brains behind this amazing project, are at it again. In conjunction with 3rd Ward, Artists Wanted, The Danger, and chashama, they’re putting on The Palms, “a late summer ode to the Boca Raton Resort Pools of the 1940s (with more music, spectacle and hedonism).” It’s not actually in Brooklyn, but I headed to Queens to see it, with Leila of everydaytrash, of course (read her take on it here). I thought it was totally fun! DJs and lounge chairs and fancy cocktails and a lobster roll truck—and, of course, the pools, which are pretty amazing to behold. Here’s a few pix by Maximus Comissar (but with my crappy camera).


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My brilliant friend Leila, one of my main blogging inspirations, writes an amazing garbage blog called everydaytrash.com. In 2009, she and two other trashies (visible trash and Ruby Reusable) started Decorative Dumpster Day, “the biennial holiday during which we take a moment to think about where we are depositing our waste by posting photos on blogs of decorated trash receptacles,” and this year she invited me to participate. Of course the first thing I thought of was the Dumpster Pools, which I’ve read about, but sadly never got to see. It’s one of the projects that caused the idea for Brooklyn Spaces to start percolating in my head, though, and I’m happy to pay tribute to a fantastically cool idea.

photo from current.com

ReadyMade Magazine broke the story. Inspired by a similar project in Georgia by Curtis Crowe of Pylon, in 2009 a trio of designers called Macro|Sea (Jocko Weyland, David Belt, and Alix Feinkind) decided to create functional guerilla art by repurposing Dumpsters into swimming pools. According to the group, the point of the project was to show that “with not too much expense, you can creatively reuse what is basically considered urban detritus and make something really cool and fun and also fairly easy to put together.” The Dumpsters were donated by a construction company, and then cleaned, sealed, lined, and filled with water—all in only twelve days. The pools opened on July 4th, 2009, and the group held very exclusive, invite-only pool parties all summer in a rented lot on the Gowanus Canal, which, in addition to the three pools, featured a BBQ grill, lounge chairs, a changing cabana, and a bocce ball court.

photo from superforest.org

In August 2010, the project was replicated in Midtown Manhattan, by invitation from Mayor Bloomburg. Macro-Sea has future plans to take the project on the road and set up Dumpster pools in strip malls all across the country, starting in Atlanta. With such a terrific intersection of practical reuse, summer fun, and serious silliness, the Dumpster Pools were a perfect Brooklyn summer project well worth sharing with the rest of the country.

pools under construction (photo from ramblinworker.com)

photo from readymade.com

Read more about the Dumpster Pools: ReadyMadeInhabitNew York TimesGawker, Brokelyn, Gothamist

Like this? Read about more public art & spectacle: Bring to LightLost Horizon Night Market, Broken AngelIdiotarod, Cathedral of Junk

proteus gowanus

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: museum & events | active since: summer 2005 | links: websitefacebook

The first time I went to Proteus Gowanus, I couldn’t find it. I walked around and around the block, checking and re-checking the address, and getting more and more confused. Finally I peered down a dubious-looking alley just around the corner from where it should have been, and sure enough, there was light spilling from a doorway halfway down. So, word to the wise: Proteus Gowanus is a little bit hidden, but it’s there.

Housed in a box-making factory from the 1900s, Proteus Gowanus is a multipurpose art space with a lot going on. It includes an art gallery with rotating and permanent exhibits, a micro-museum, a library, a reading and study room, an event space, and a collaborative nonprofit boutique of unique publications and “protean objects.” Proteus Gowanus has a broad scope, but all of its disparate parts come together to make a varied, fascinating whole.

Among their exhibits and projects:

  • The Observatory Room, an interdisciplinary event space that hosts discussions, film screenings, and lectures on a wide range of topics, from Parisian brothels to Italian medical museums to Haitian voodoo to American cartoons. (I’ve been to three Observatory events, and they’ve all been amazing.)
  • Morbid Anatomy, an outgrowth of the blog by the same name, featuring a collection of books, photographs, ephemera, and artifacts relating to anatomical art, cabinets of curiosity, the history of medicine, death and mortality, memorial practice, arcane media, and other topics.
  • Hall of the Gowanus, a micro-museum of local curiosities, including old Gowanus maps, pressed flowers from the region, a Gowanus historical timeline, and much more.

Hall of the Gowanus

  • The Fixers Collective, an idea that grew out of an exhibit in the gallery, which encourages people to bring in something broken, which the collective members make a collaborative effort to restore, mend, repurpose, or enhance.
  • The Reanimation Library, an almost whimsical permanent collection of outdated, worn, or discarded books.

Reanimation Library

  • Proteotypes, which extends some of Proteus Gowanus’s shows and exhibitions into the field of printed matter.
  • dedicated to assembling apparently incongruous ideas or forms to construct surprising yet meaningful compounds and dialogues.
  • The Writhing Society, a weekly class/salon dedicated to constrained writing.
  • A study hall and writers space in all galleries and reading rooms. (Membership only $50/mo!)

(photos from the Proteus Gowanus Facebook page)

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Like this? Read about other micro-museums: City Reliquary, Micro Museum